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Round-Up for the Week of September 8-11, 2026

In what has been described as social media’s “Big Tobacco moment,” Meta announced a settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico over claims that the company endangered children with intentionally addictive social media platforms. The company behind Facebook and Instagram agreed to pay up to roughly $17 billion and make major product changes, including daily time limits and “enhanced age assurance measures.” Notably, Meta pays the full $17+ billion only if competitors TikTok and YouTube agree to enact similar changes. 

The settlement runs 130 pages. Two sentences recap what the states alleged, and 20 pages set out what Meta will do. Nothing joins one to the other. The agreement provides that Meta’s obligations "are explicitly limited to the Settling States" and cannot "establish a standard of care for, or serve as precedent in" any non-participating state or any other country. Meta agreed to change its products on the condition that nobody treat those changes as an answer to anything. The pairings below are ours, not the document's.

How Did We Get Here?

The deal—a Consent Judgment filed August 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California—resolves litigation that began in 2023, when 33 states—including California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Kentucky—sued Meta for contributing to a youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms. Additional states filed separate but related suits.

The states alleged that Meta’s conduct amounted to a four-part scheme: 

1. Meta created a business model focused on maximizing the time young users spend on its platforms;
2. Meta designed and deployed psychologically harmful tools “to induce young users’ compulsive and extended platform use” while falsely assuring the public that such tools were safe;
3. Meta “routinely” published misleading reports claiming a “deceptively low incidence of user harms;” and
4. Meta refused to abandon the use of known harmful features “and has instead redoubled its efforts to misrepresent, conceal, and downplay the impact of those features on young users’ mental and physical health.”

The states cite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which observed a significant increase in the percentage of high school students “who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” in the decade following the launch of Instagram. 

In early August, a New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567 million after finding the company had created a “public nuisance" by designing products to addict young users and failing to adequately protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms. Following the ruling, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez (D-NM) said,

New Mexico is not among the states eligible to join the multistate settlement. 

Just weeks later, Meta settled this multistate case before CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to testify. The settlement is not an admission of liability, and Meta denies all wrongdoing.

Three Terms to Understand

The settlement’s obligations frequently mention three defined terms: 1) Teen Users, 2) Supervising Parents. 

1. A “Teen User” is defined as a Meta platform user "with a predicted or stated age from 13 through 17 years old." 
2. A “Supervising Parent” is defined as "an adult who is formally linked through a Meta social media platform’s (SMP) parental supervision controls to supervise a Teen User. To be a Supervising Parent, an adult must actively enroll and link to a Teen User’s account through Meta’s parental controls. 
3. The "State Committee" is "a bipartisan group of no more than 6 Attorney General offices appointed by Settling States." The Committee, not the 51 signatories individually, picks the independent auditor, agrees to the auditor's work plan, can extend Meta's deadlines for fixing problems the auditor identifies, and must consent by majority before any state enforces the settlement's ban on misleading safety claims.

Harms and Remedies

The settlement—or Consent Judgment—itself states the alleged harms briefly in its recitals. 

Within 60 days of the Effective Date, Meta and the State Committee must jointly select an independent auditor. The auditor will evaluate how Meta implements the settlement's injunctive terms, set or approve the methods and metrics used to measure that implementation, and report its findings. Those reports go to the State Committee, not the public. The auditor releases only an executive summary of each final report, and both Meta and the State Committee review a draft of that summary before it goes out.

Harm: Meta used its technology “to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.” Meta cofounder Sean Parker was quoted in the original lawsuit as saying,

Remedy: Time management. Meta will introduce nighttime cutoffs and daily time limits for minors. These will be enacted in two phases.

In Phase I, teens are locked out from midnight to 6 am, though messaging and settings stay available during the lockout. Teens also get a two-hour daily cap, counted cumulatively across Instagram and Facebook. Three things fall outside that count: messaging, settings, and any video or audio running 22 minutes or longer, which the agreement calls "Longform Content." Separately, from 10 pm to 7 am, Meta will disable push notifications for teen users unless a parent modifies them.

In Phase II, teens are locked out from 10 pm to 7 am and face a 60-minute daily cap on each app, not to exceed 120 minutes across all of them. That combined ceiling matches the two hours Phase I allows; Phase II adds a per-app sub-cap and a nighttime lockout three hours longer.

Remedy: Productive pause breaks. Within 4 months, Meta will introduce “Productive Pause” breaks. Platforms will notify teens after 15 minutes of consecutive use and again after 60 and 90 minutes. Meta will provide the independent auditor with data on the efficacy of productive pauses and notices. 

Remedy: School mode. Meta will disable push notifications for Teen Users during "School Hours," which the agreement defines as 8 am to 3 pm, Monday through Friday, from August 15 to June 15. Notifications tied to messaging, account security, or platform integrity are exempt and still come through. Supervising Parents can adjust a teen's school hours and can further restrict access to everything except messaging during those hours.

Harm: Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data from underage users.

Remedy: New Age Assurance Framework. Within one year, Meta must roll out an “Age Assurance Framework.” Meta can license outside tools or build its own, and either way, an accredited third party must test them annually. The agreement sets targets for what it calls the U18 False Positive Rate—the share of actual 13- to 17-year-olds that a tool wrongly classifies as 18 or older. Licensed outside tools must hit 10 percent for 16- and 17-year-olds and 3 percent for 13- to 15-year-olds within a year, and those targets do not tighten after that. Meta's own tools start looser, at 14 percent and 7 percent, and tighten to 10 percent and 5 percent by year two. Put plainly, the agreement tolerates as many as one in ten 16- and 17-year-olds being treated as adults.  Meta also “agrees to incorporate in its Age Assurance Framework reliable age signals shared with Meta by operating systems and app stores operated by Apple and Google.” 

Remedy: Detection model to find under-13 users. Within six months, Meta must implement strategies designed to detect users under the age of 13. Within one year, Meta must develop and begin testing a detection model designed to predict whether a user is under 13. Meta must report results to the Independent Auditor and set escalating enforcement targets to identify and remove underage users. Meta also agrees to use best practices to prevent circumvention of age detection. 

Remedy: New and unverified users default to teen accounts. For the first 14 days after an account is created, a user whose age Meta has not yet assessed as a Teen User only if that user stated an age under 18. A user who states an age of 18 or older receives two narrower protections during that window: 1) limits on contact from accounts Meta flags as potential bad actors, and 2) content recommendations modeled on what Meta considers age-appropriate. After 14 days, any user whose age still has not been assessed is treated as a Teen User regardless of stated age, though stated adults keep those two narrower protections. Users who claim to have been misidentified as minors must be offered a "Clear and Conspicuous means" to appeal, and Meta must decide appeals "in a timely manner." The agreement sets no deadline.

Harm: Meta “ignored the damages these Platforms have caused to the mental and physical wellbeing of America's youth." The states cite Meta’s Project Daisy—which found that hiding “like” counts could help young users—but was never made the default. States also cite Meta’s decision to allow filters that mimic cosmetic surgery even after a brief public backlash-driven ban.

Remedy: Feed options. Within 4 months, Meta will offer teens and parents the option to switch to a chronological, non-personalized feed. Within 10 days of identifying a new Teen User account, and every 90 days thereafter, platforms must “Clearly and Conspicuously” prompt Teen Users with the option to switch to a non-personalized feed.

Remedy: Social comparison. Reaction counts will be turned off by default for Teen Users. Teen Users will also be banned from using filters that mimic cosmetic surgery.

Remedy: Parental notification when teens search for self-harm, eating disorder, or suicide content. Instagram and Facebook will notify a “Supervising Parent” if a teen engages in repeated searches for terms related to self-harm, eating disorders, or suicide.

Harm: Exposure to harmful experiences and people. The settlement takes up this harm on its own terms, in a section titled "Exposure to Harmful Experiences and People." It defines "Harmful Experiences" narrowly—third-party behavior violating Meta's Community Standards on child sexual exploitation, abuse, and nudity—and separately defines "Inappropriate Interactions with Children" to include soliciting sexual encounters with teens, sexualized conversation in private messages, requesting sexual material, selling teens goods they cannot legally buy, and fraudulent solicitation.

In early August, a New Mexico court found that Meta's platforms constitute a "public nuisance" and rejected Meta's argument that Section 230 shielded it from liability for products it knowingly designed. The court ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund to abate harms to the state's youth. That order followed a March 2026 jury verdict finding roughly 75,000 violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, for which the jury imposed the maximum civil penalty of $375 million. Together, the two bring Meta's court-ordered liability in New Mexico to $942 million. Meta has said it will appeal.

Remedy: Potentially suspicious contact notification. When a message thread is established between a Teen User and a “potentially suspicious contact,” Meta will “promptly deliver Clear and Conspicuous notices” to signal a Teen User to exercise caution. Further, Meta will notify a Supervising Parent about a Teen User’s interaction with accounts identified as likely to engage in financial blackmail using intimate content or accounts identified as “potentially likely to engage in Inappropriate Interactions with Children.”

Remedy: First contact notifications. Separately, Meta will notify Supervising Parents—on a daily basis, not in real time—when their teen communicates directly with an adult user for the first time. The notice includes a link to that adult's profile, which may show details such as a stated hometown or mutual connections, to the extent that information is already public.

Harm: Meta exposed teens to age-inappropriate content and accounts, and to bullying and harassment, without adequate tools to report or escalate concerns.

Remedy: Content restrictions and account blocking. Meta must maintain content policies limiting Teen Users' exposure to "Age Inappropriate Content" and content that violates its bullying and harassment standards, and must prevent Teen Users from following, seeing content from, or being recommended accounts flagged as age-inappropriate.

Remedy: Ban on misleading safety claims. Meta is "enjoined (forbidden) from making false, misleading, or deceptive representations regarding the effect or efficacy of safety features for Teen Users." The injunction reaches only statements Meta makes on or after the Effective Date, and it carries unusual enforcement limits. No state can act alone: enforcement requires the consent of a majority of the State Committee, and the enforcing state must first give Meta 30 days' notice, plus a chance to confer and propose a corrective action plan. This is also the one injunctive provision expressly carved out of the independent auditor's review. 

Remedy: Faster, more accountable content reporting. Meta must offer in-app tools that let Teen Users report illegal content, content that violates Meta's Community Standards, or content that is otherwise unwanted, offensive, or concerning, and must continue accepting reports in multiple languages. For reports submitted in English or Spanish, Meta must "maintain processes designed to permit" a teen to receive Meta's decision within 6 hours in at least 90 percent of cases—an obligation to build the process rather than guarantee the result. Teen Users must also be able to appeal a finding that no violation occurred, and must be told how that appeal came out.

Harm: Parents lacked visibility and control over their teens' accounts, including the ability to detect workarounds.

Remedy: Meta agrees to provide Supervising Parents with information concerning the amount of time their Teen User is spending on Meta platforms. Meta will also share “the usernames of the Teen User’s social connections and individuals messaging the Teen User, and usernames of any user reported by a Teen User.”

Remedy: Alert for secondary accounts. Meta will notify Supervising Parents if a Teen User makes or connects a secondary account or is matched with a secondary account.

The Payout

Meta agreed to financial obligations as part of the settlement. Payouts will fall into three buckets:

1. $75 million into a fund to reimburse states' litigation and investigation costs.
2. $11.7 billion in "Guaranteed Installment Payments" over 10 years, split among the settling states.
3. Up to $5.02 billion more in 'Contingency Installment Payments,' which Meta owes a state only if two conditions are both met:

• Snap, TikTok, and YouTube all become bound—by settlement, by law, or by audited voluntary commitment—to substantively equivalent time limits and to age-assurance obligations no weaker than Meta's, each backed by a five-year independent audit; and 
• each of those competitors with annual profits above $10 billion also owes that state at least as much money as Meta's contingency payment. 

If the trigger never fires during the agreement's 10-year term, Meta keeps the money.

Combined, Meta owes participating states up to ~$17 billion. Of that total, $11.7 billion is locked in whether other companies enact similar changes or not. 

The settlement places almost no restriction on how states spend their shares. Instead, the settlement directs that the money be used "for any lawful purpose consistent with the Settling State's Attorney General's authority," then offers a list of examples rather than requirements: expanding the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and text-based youth crisis lines, after-school and summer programs, youth mental health programming, a digital wellness public education fund, hiring digital literacy counselors, implementing phone-free school zones, training medical providers, and grants to school districts and other local governments. A separate provision lets attorneys general designate part of their share for attorneys' fees, litigation costs, and other law enforcement costs. Nothing in the agreement obligates a state to spend a dollar of it on young people.

Looking Forward

States participating in the lawsuit release Meta from related civil claims arising from the conduct described in the complaint. Non-participating states are not bound by the agreement, and may continue to pursue their own claims. The agreement is also not an admission of liability by Meta, nor can it be cited as precedent or legal standard elsewhere. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the lead plaintiffs, said the settlement hands states an "enforceable blueprint" for child safety protections, and aimed the point at TikTok, Snap, and YouTube. The document he signed says otherwise. It is not an admission of liability by Meta, and it forecloses its own use as precedent:

A few things to keep an eye on as the settlement takes effect: 

• The independent auditor selection, due within 60 days, and the first work plan, due 90 days later. These will be early indicators of how rigorously the settlement will be enforced.
• The "Industry-Wide Adoption" trigger. The Phase II limits and roughly $5 billion in contingency payments turn on the same closed list of competitors—Snap, TikTok, and YouTube—all bound to equivalent obligations, plus, for the money, each owing that state at least as much as Meta would.
• The five-year cliff. The agreement runs for 10 years, but its two headline remedies do not. The Phase I nighttime lockout and daily time limit apply for five years. If the Phase II trigger is never met, those limits simply lapse, with roughly half the agreement's term still to run. Oversight runs on a similar clock: the independent auditor's term ends 120 days after its fifth annual report.

Quick Bits

• FCC Announces Tentative Agenda for September 2026 Open Meeting
• Sizing Up Another BEAD Round Using the Ever-Changing BEAD Map
• The Largest Data Centers Planned in Rural Counties
• Governor Newsom signs first-in-the-nation AI safeguards
• Nearly a decade after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, New Mexico alone is taking Facebook to trial 

Weekend Reads

• NTIA Seeks Feedback on Internet Use Survey
• Comparing Poverty Measures: Development of the Supplemental Poverty Measure and Differences with the Official Poverty Measure
• Chatbots and the Ballot Box: Evaluating Accuracy, Sourcing, and Language Gaps in AI Answers to Election Questions

ICYMI from Benton

How Public is the Public Cloud?

Broadband Heresies: Or, what Twilight, Harry Potter, X-Men, and The Incredibles can teach us about telecommunications policy

A Call for a New Communications Act

GAO Says Public Broadband Investment Hasn't Reached Its Fullest Potential Yet

NTIA Opens a Second Round of BEAD Funding for Locations the Program Missed the First Time

A Final Weekly Digest, and a New Chapter

Upcoming Events

Sept 15—Examining Legislative Proposals to Reform Medicare Provider Payment and Bolster Health Care Cybersecurity (House Commerce Committee)

Sept 15—Listening Session on the FCC's E-Rate and Screen Use NPRM (NTIA)

Sept 15––Can communities mitigate their rising concerns about data centers? (Brookings)

Sept 17––i2Coalition 2026 Internet Leadership Awards Ceremony & Reception

Sept 22—The Class of '96: Legacy of the Fight to Close the Digital Divide (Public Knowledge)

Sept 24—25 Hours. One Connected World. (Connected Nation)

Sept 24—A New Compact for Connectivity: Internet Infrastructure in the Public Interest (Benton Institute for Broadband & Society)

Sept 25-26—TPRC54

Sept 30—September 2026 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting

Oct 7-9—AnchorNets 2026

Oct 8—23rd Annual IP3 Awards

 

 

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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